Overclocking WHY?

lancelot · Post by **lancelot** » 01 Sep 2003, 11:01

In her September editorial, Tamsini was suggesting that geeks (hate that word) should be educated in computer terminology and workings. This is indeed admirable but never the less a frightening prospect for the uninitiated. One only has to read the answers given by the "brainy" like Luis who seem to obtain more delight via sarcasm than actual help.
However I want to know (because I have no idea) why do you guys and girls overclock? Is there a major improvement to performance; is it just for the challenge? Is it not possible just to buy a better processor? These are genuine questions, please enlighten me, there used to be quite a lot of questions, flaming etc, around this topic in the past. I remember Naughty who used to post a lot but has defected to PlanetMars (Sad) but others, still on this fine site also had a lot to say. Please point me in the right learning direction so that I can be happy!

gorak · Post by **gorak** » 01 Sep 2003, 11:10

overclocking can gain you about 10 % increase in speed .

eg . i had a radeon 8500 and a 2500+ amd (barton 166 frontside bus) and i got 9678 points n 3dmark 01. i the overclocked the cpu .(raised the fsb to 190.) my bios the detected the cpu as an amd 2800 . i got 10028 points .

not really earth shattering ............

i overclock to see to what i can push my cpu and displaycard , but once the limit is reached i usually clock back tpo stock speeds .(after taking screenshot of bench score ).

skunkymunky · Post by **skunkymunky** » 01 Sep 2003, 11:10

my mobo is not an overclocker's mobo so i did to prove my self i cud do it.

managed to push the chip by 200mhz to a 1900+.

Post by **Kronos** » 01 Sep 2003, 11:19

People overclock simply because they can. Its the same reason why some people upgrade their cars, They simply want the best performance. Many people think, what's the point in having a car that can drive 400 km/h, when the speed limit is 120. like I said, Because they can.

The same thing goes for PCs. Whoever has the fastest PC has the right to Brag. Sure it's good to have a PC that can run Q3 at 300 fps, even if we only play at 30 fps. it's simply (maybe we should make this the Geek motto), "BECAUSE WE CAN"

NinjaTic · Post by **NinjaTic** » 01 Sep 2003, 11:41

Overclocking has exploded over the last few months (what I have noticed anyway!). I have many friends who simply overclock to "push the envlope". In reality there is no real point to overclocking if your current stock speed PC can run every application that it needs to or you want it to! If you have an inferiour speced PC, that will run a certain app/game if it's overclocked, then go for it, but simply overclocking to see what 3DMark score you can achieve is, to me, pointless!

Overclocking also voids the warrantee on the CPU or Graphic card, and is thus always at your own risk. The main culprit in breaking CPUs/GPUs is the heat. The faster you push the chip the hotter it gets, the hotter it gets, the easier it breaks! - Hence all the cooling that all overclockers have - extra system fans, watercooling equipment etc.

I, personally overclock, but not to the extreme that I need a watercooling kit to keep the CPU below 50 degrees! I think that overclocking (as said before) is the same as car "supeing" but with computers!

Some people go to the extremes though! - I read an article about how a P4 1.6Ghz was pushed to 3Ghz. The heat build up was so extreme, that the "overclocking team" had to use liquid nitrogen to keep the CPU stable!

brabham · Post by **brabham** » 01 Sep 2003, 14:06

I too have never seen the fascination with overclocking but just recently I have become a bit interested in the whole idea. I have one of the older P4 1.7GHz chips. Just lately I have been wondering if I can overclock it and by how much. I was gonna post in the forums about advice, but I feel too much of a n00b at the whole thing to even brave that kind of abuse.

I dont want to go hectic just a bit on the top you know. I dont want to spend money on extra fans and heatsinks just a standard system running at a higher than reccommended speed. See I know so little that I could well burn my chip to blazes if I try it.

The thing is these P4 chips are supposed to be highly overclockable, so of course I wanna try and put them to the test. More importantly though I want to overclock my now prehistoric geforce3 card. I look at it this way; if I blow anything it will be the necessary impetus I need to upgrade.

Just my thoughts...

lancelot · Post by **lancelot** » 01 Sep 2003, 14:06

Thanks for the info! How does one do it? Is it simple or complex, I would like to try it but without water coolers or liquid nitrogen! Is there a web site that tells you how?

AngryRabbit · Post by **AngryRabbit** » 01 Sep 2003, 14:20

overclocking can gain you about 10 % increase in speed .

Actually overclocking can gain over 80% performance increase, if it's done right. Unfortunately my CPU runs a little to hot to overclock, so I'm left with my stock standard speeds. I will probably OC my radeon when DoomIII comes out though.

gorak · Post by **gorak** » 01 Sep 2003, 14:32

sorry , i was thinking about cpu overclock where u get between 10-15% on top of the stock speed . eg p 2000mhz - +- 2200 ........ normal stuff.
i dont like to play with voltages .

zimdollar · Post by **zimdollar** » 01 Sep 2003, 19:00

Overclocking is pretty simple on most CPUs but you have to have proper cooling. I gained 150mhz but then games started to crash and Windows became even more unstable, so I reverted back till I can get a better fan.

Fishzn · Post by **Fishzn** » 01 Sep 2003, 20:32

Overclocking can be regarded as the videomachine for your TV or even the watering can to your garden (hows the analogies,LOL), its simply one of those added extras that come with the main deal! Some guys benefit more than others because of superior knowledge, technology or just plain old luck! Overclocking also allows you to mayb, just mayb reach that dream machine of yours(without the monetary sacrifice) if you're really serious about it! I mean some guys clock their pc's from plain old 2500+ to 3200+ and as Ninjatic said a guy went from 1.6Ghz to 3.0Ghz. It just depends how you do it what you use to do it, and how serious you are about it!

Heres a few sites to quench your curiosty:
www.extremeoverclocking.com
www.overclockers.com /add a .au to goto the australian site
http://www.tweak3d.net/
http://www.overclockersclub.com/

These should help you for now!

LordRage · Post by **LordRage** » 01 Sep 2003, 20:36

MR BEAN GOT HIS 2.4 to 3.6!!! Come on guys the challenge is great!!

By the way Naughty still reads alot of your posts but he is better appreciated at Planet Mars.

nuf · Post by **nuf** » 01 Sep 2003, 20:54

As AngryRabit said, you can get a huge increase, sometimes with little effort. It all depends on the chip you get. I've had those that can't overclock for S&#T and then those that hit great speed without needing extra cooling.
Personally I like to push it to the limit just for kicks.

Yes, you can go buy a new chip, but I'd like to squeeze every little bit out of the chip I got until then. Even if you only get 200MHz extra, thats still the difference between going and buying a 1.8GHz and a 2GHz. Hasn't it ever irritated you driving at 120km/h when you can go faster?!

As for the extreme overclockers (I wish I had the money to do that); they the dragsters of the overclockers. Most people drive at the 120km/h, some of us a little faster, but they hit the 400km/h

Sweet.

Go read some tuts and then play a bit. If you do it slow and steady, the chances of doing damage are so little. I've been overclocking for about 5 years and love it. I take the chances and have never blown a cpu yet (and I torture them quite a lot)

LordRage · Post by **LordRage** » 01 Sep 2003, 20:56

I havent blown mine either, but I did blow my PSU!!!

I agree people should read tuts or ask people that know about it!

n00b · Post by **n00b** » 02 Sep 2003, 06:18

Naughty who used to post a lot but has defected to PlanetMars (Sad)

i know the guy personally and he actually started off at planetmars when it came to local sites, and anyways he isnt the only person who knows about overclocking since you will still find lots of help here

overclocking is done for various reasons when a better chip would obviously help but you can get some cpu's to actually work at higher rated speeds for the price of the lower model.This actually is made possible by a procedure that cpu manufacturers use called speed binning.The best way that i can explain this is for you to use an example of amd who began the xp range with a 1500+ and 1600+ palomino.Initially these could only perform well at rated speeds but as yields improved and you began to get cpu's that scaled to higher rated speeds up to the 2100+ you had a few that failed quality control tests for various reasons such as not running properly at default voltages or not being fully stable at rated speeds with the stock coolers etc so these were rebadged as lower rated chips and sold off to recover some cash. These were identified by the stepping numbers and letters on the core of the chip (im not gonna give you the details here cos this will take at least two or three pages of typing) but suffice it to say that the steppings of the last palomino 2100's were agoia and aroia so when you landed up with a 1600+ with that stepping you knew for a fact that you had a speed binned chip which with better cooling and higher voltages and other excellent hardware would run you at higher speeds.Considering that at the tail end of the palomino's the 1600+ was around R700 and the 2100+ was around R3000 wouldnt you have loved to get the higher performance for the lower price

Then when the xp range was introduced the t-bred 2100's became the overclock kings especially the aiuhb variety because most of those were speed binned 2600/2800 chips and then when the barton came about the DLT3 stepping 1700's were bartons with some L2 cache disabled but most of those could easily hit above 2.2ghz which is a barton 3200+ rated speed (from default 1.466mhz speeds)

from intel the willamettes were terrible overclockers but when the northwoods were introduced the malaysian C1 chips were amazing overclockers giving knowledgeable guys up to 1ghz overclocks and currently the new 2.4C chips continue that trend going up to around 3.4ghz aircooled and maybe around 3.6 watercooled

from the above you should be able to see that guys skilled in overclocking tricks will be able to get a lot more performance from their pc's WHY you ask and the reply to that is for the same reason people would buy a car capable of going 300km/h when the speed limit is only 120. To me it is a fun hobby to see just how far i can get the latest and greatest hardware to go and also compare to how well other people do it

i still havent gone into the other benefits such as increased bandwidth and also due to the increase in the bandwidth the resultant increased stability while performing tasks that are power/bandwidth/memory hungry.I use lots of applications that benefit a great deal from overclocking because of the increases in fsb and bandwidth also skilled manipulation of pci/agp busses can also aid in gaming by speeding up your vid card to a certain extent my current system would peak (note usage of word peak not average) at a framerate of around 450 frames per second in QUAKE3 at 800x600 with most of the other eye candy turned on which makes it a darned fast rig by any account , and also i know that your friend naughty's 2100+ t-bred actually is able to overclock up to 2.4ghz (from the default of 1.73ghz) which is a mean overclock and on the intel side MrBeans 2.4b northwood manages 3.6ghz peaks with his vapochill (phase change cooling which is a topic for another subject of discussion)

my main advice to potential overclockers is to obviously take it one step at a time.Start slowly and as you increase in confidence and knowledge then start pushing on and you will save yourself lots of frustration in the long run.Learn what the system bus is and how it works and its effects on fsb/pci/agp busses (soon to be defunct due to new chip architecture but all knowledge on this would be required for current hardware) then start looking at how memory works and how it is affected by differing timings (eg cas latency which stands for column address strobe and knowledge of what it means wont help till you figure out that memory fundementally works in rows and columns and these timings would be describing the relationship between how the memory interacts).The you could investigate the effects of increased voltages to your cpu and memory known as vcore and vdimm and also knowing that to increase those voltages would cause increased heat so you need more effecient cooling not only for the cpu but sometimes even for the chipset or the mosfets on the motherboard keep on asking in the forums at every step of the way and you will learn each specific thing one at a time and also google search on each step till you eventually build up your own database of knowledge which will allow you to now help the next generation of overclockers/pc buffs

anyways my fingers are now tired so im gonna stop here.Hope that this has helped to put overclocking and overclockers into perspective (other than the fact that most of them have too much time on their hands LOL) so if you have any specific questions fire away and we shall see how we can help

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 02 Sep 2003, 06:29

LordRage said

By the way Naughty still reads allot of your posts but he is better appreciated at Planet Mars.

I know this is off topic, but something need to be said. I have the greatest respect for Naughty (he's prob one of the most knowledgeable ppl we had on this forum in hardware and oc and was always a valuable contributor) I gather that he don't actively post anymore because of the unfortunate incident between members of ET and PM (And I can respect his decision). But to generalize and say he was not appreciated is not true.

To get back to the topic. I say if u can, why not. Oc'ing can be great fun and can just get that bit more go for u'r bucks.

NinjaTic · Post by **NinjaTic** » 02 Sep 2003, 07:49

N00b, that was quite a read for me (I'm sure that your figers were sore after that!)

It sounds as though you've researched, and taken a great interest in the topic of overclocking.

I've overclocked my 1.6Ghz P4 Northwood to 2,13Ghz and the results were beautiful! With the help of four system fans, my CPU idles at 32, and maxes at 52.

My question to you is regaurding CPU voltage. I've currently got my voltage set on auto (in the BIOS). Is there a recommended voltage increase for a certain speed increase?

Also, what would be the easiest way to overclock the RAM. Are there any noticible speed increases, and is RAM easily "broken" by overclocking it?

Thanks!

lancelot · Post by **lancelot** » 02 Sep 2003, 10:16

I must thank all of you who have posted here. Thanks for the help and pointers in the right direction. I am going to have a go and if everything is still working, I will let you all know what happens!

n00b · Post by **n00b** » 02 Sep 2003, 16:37

ninjatic IMO dont increase too much cpu voltage on a P4 because p4's suffer from a voltage induced "sudden death syndrome" but amd's are okay with voltage increases.There are no magical figures since overclocking is mostly luck of the draw with the hardware and also a case of having the knowledge to carry it off successfully so there isnt any definite amounts to increase but you should be now trying to look at forms of better cooling (if you want to overclock higher) though if you are happy with your current overclock those figures you quote dont seem too bad

the ram is most of the time durable enough and you should be able to overclock properly if you play around with the timings and dont be scared to add voltage to the ram but do it at one volt at a time and you wont go wrong

edit: ninjatic just had to add this bit about voltage, the P4's dont take kindly to more than only 0.5v to 1v increase though at 1v id say that you are pushing it unless you have some really great cooling

Boesman · Post by **Boesman** » 02 Sep 2003, 23:04

How far do you guys think I could push my P4 1.7 on a not really for overclocking mobo, I think it's a 845GPE

n00b · Post by **n00b** » 03 Sep 2003, 06:11

okay, heres a few things id like to point out at this junction, overclocking would be easily carried out if the hardware was designed for it for example known models of speed binned chips and motherboards that have every option available for overclocking with the reasoning being if it couldnt handle it when done sensibly then they wouldnt put it in there also your ram would play a big role in the equation cos if you have ddr266 or pc133 then you would need to get extremely lucky or really would need to sift out the good ones from a huge selection of them

overclocking to gain 100mhz or so on a p4 would be pointless since you wouldnt notice many gains in fact on most P4 systems you should be trying to gain at least 300mhz before you can notice any speed increases and the fact is most P4's after the willamettes would easily do that at a minimum. The willamettes were the ones with the 400mhz fsb and were actually terribly slow as well as being bad overclockers but the introduction of the northwood (533mhz fsb) chips brought about a reversal especially as ive said earlier when those malaysian chips hit onto the market this is when intels began to hit some major speeds on overclocks

the point im getting at is if you have hardware that was not specifically designed for overclocking then you will have a hard time to do it successfully.Having said that this does not stop you from trying as long as your motherboard is not an origional intel motherboard since those did not have any options which would allow overclocking till recently. If you are lucky enough to get above 200mhz increases at your first attempt then it may be worthwhile for you to continue but if you cannot get that then you will actually be trying to place too much strain on components that will not easily achieve your aims and will be risking hardware failure.

for those lucky enough to have selected hardware that is known to have good overclocks you will face a lower risk of visiting that great big hardware graveyard in the sky LOL in other words you would also need to research all of your components by reading reviews and participating in forums here and overseas and finding more about your particular items of hardware and it will also require that you research which functions of your bios can help for your particular hardware since even seemingly identical bits of hardware will react differently to what you are trying to do. So if anyone attempts to guess at how high any bit of hardware goes IMO this is kind of impossible, and the only way to figure out limits is to go to them and then only you or anyone else will be able to say for certain how far your stuff will go

as an example at the moment an overclockers dream system would be an ABIT IS7G mobo (springdale chipset) with a P4 2.4C and some good pc3500/pc3700 ram. With that you could be sure of at least getting to speeds of the highest available intel chip at themoment which is a 3.2ghz for daily running speeds with the stock intel provided cooler and whatever graphics card you chose. Now Boesman unfortunately this wont help you since as seeing you already have your system and would like to know how far it is likely to go and the short answer to this would be "its anyones guess until you get there" so what im saying is that you have to try it out and thats where the fun bit comes in. The learning curve as you try to find out about your own system is really high and it could be fun if you enjoy this type of thing. If you dont like to research stuff then overclocking wont be for you and you should rather try and tweak your system to the max to get the most out of it. The quick fix would be to go out and buy the dream overclocking system or the hard way is lots of experimenting and reading about what you have.

either way whoever decides to overclock good luck and dont hesitate to ask specific questions but to assist when you do get stuck and need to ask you need to give people a quick rundown of what you are trying to do with what so a description of your system would help eg:-

1)abit is7g motherboard
2)p4 2.4C chip
3)kingston hyperx pc3500 ram
4)geforce fx 5900ultra vidcard

followed by a quick description of what you tried to do and what happened eg:-

i tried to up my fsb to 300mhz in synchronous mode and the pc refused to boot (LOL not gonna happen in this lifetime even with the above mentioned hardware unless you have phase change cooling and/or you are the luckiest sod alive) but anyways thats what you tried and now the pc refuses to go past a black screen when you depress the power button so the answer to that would be to use the jumper to clear the cmos and start again but go up by lower increments starting from maybe 20mhz higher than stock levels and upping by 5mhz after each successful boot up attempt till the pc is unstable when you bootup (eg cannot run 3d mark without restarting or gets an error in prime95 in the first minute and stops the test) which is the point you begin to dial down. when you can complete a 3d mark run and prime 95 can run for at least one hour you are ready for the real acid test which is to leave prime 95 on overnight and see if the pc is really stable enough for daily running at those levels (bit of a detailed answer but this was to give a clearer picture of the type of help you could expect if you ask properly)

i hope that people will realise that general questions can only be figured out by personal experimentation while specific problems can be fixed but will require that you reveal a certain amount of info about your setup before someone can help. Also since most setups differ you should actually seek help from people whose setup is similiar to your own which will give you a small database of knowledge that you can build up about your own personal setup while the general questions are more difficult to reply to even though most of the basic principles remain the same

i for one will be confident to give advise on the following step to take if a person can correctly identify his hardware since he then probably has an idea what each one of those things does (may be a small idea but an idea nevertheless) and he will be able to follow instructions on how to take the next step and will also be able to react quickly when things are not going as they should to be able to stop anything serious going wrong and also troubleshoot minor problems without wantng to return hardware when all it required was a simple clearing of the cmos or reseat of ram or vidcard

so guys feel free to ask questions (on specific points) which bother you but for a detailed overclocking beginners guide you would need to do a small google search and once you have grasped a few basics you would be ready to try an do it on your own with a bit of prompting from guys here who will be able to help when you hit problems.Its a bit like cricket coaching LOL the coach can tell you that you stand incorrectly when you hit the ball and then show you the correct stance but he will not be able to run onto the field and hit the ball for you , you need to do that and after the game you need to analyse your mistakes

shoo guys lots of reading here and sorry for the long posts but i hope that it helps a bit

EDIT :ROFLMAO the forum is now censoring the word s-h-o-r-t as in opposite of tall LOL now thats a bit extreme id say cos it makes it seem like i said something rude up there when i did not

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 03 Sep 2003, 06:47

Thanks for the info n00b. As luck would have it I had a look at the Intel 2.4/2.6 800fsb chips with a Gigabyte mobo combo. Do u have any knowledge or experience regarding these type of setups (I'm not asking for specifics, just ideas). And witch do u think is the best oc vs. value rig nowadays, Intel or AMD? It just seems to me that Intel is a good oc with almost no major heat issues, with the right components btw.

nuf · Post by **nuf** » 03 Sep 2003, 09:12

Guys, just remember that even if you get a stable system now, the temperature is still on the coolish side for most areas. In mid summer your system might crash. Get a program to monitor the temperature of the cpu/system and keep an eye on it.

I remember the first time I overclocked I didnâ€™t know to reset the bios when failing to post and I kaked myself. I thought I had blown something, which again goes to reading the tuts. The more you know the easier it gets (and donâ€™t be afraid to try)

Boesman · Post by **Boesman** » 03 Sep 2003, 10:23

Thanx noob, maybe i'll try overclocking, and get some extra preformance from it..........

n00b · Post by **n00b** » 03 Sep 2003, 15:57

zero , id say that both are about equal since a 2500+ with a good nforce2 ultra400 mobo would be about the same as a 2.4c with a good springdale/canterwood mobo. Imho out of the P4 2.4C and 2.6C chips the 2.4 would be a better bet since intels multipliers are locked while amds multipliers are not locked so you would be able to raise your fsb to get better bandwidth without having to raise your clockspeeds too high and still induce benefits without having to strain components

it would depend on your brand preference and i dont have any.My ultimate aim is to have one of each that would be similiar in performance but im sure that everyone has a favourite so without wanting to display a preference i would still say that the intels would overclock better but the amds give good overclocks for lower prices though. The intel mobo would cost a bit more and the 2500+ is around half the price of the 2.4C but dont put too much faith in IPC figures anymore

since before intel used to produce 6 instructions per cycle compared to amd's 9 and this accounted for amd's sterling performance and also their marketting of processors on a comparative scale rather than actual measured figures but that gap is closing since the new 800fsb northwoods actually are closer to 8 instructions per cycle thus you should realise that amds pr rating (performance rating/pentium rating whichever floats your boat) is now becoming obsoleteand will be totally useless by the time that the prescott is released